The threat of internment still looms over the US

That day President Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 9066. As a result, more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, the majority of whom were United States citizens, were detained and denied their constitutional rights. Even the Supreme Court eventually became complicit with this betrayal of American values, ruling in the 1944 case Korematsu v. United States that internment was justifiable and legal.

The specter of Japanese internment did not appear overnight, but was preceded by consistent rhetoric that dehumanized Japanese people, most famously through the use of a three letter abbreviation. The Japanese were painted by some as disloyal, incapable of being American and fundamentally Japanese before all else.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover asserted that there was no dangerous Japanese fifth column among us after Pearl Harbor. Despite that, the Roosevelt administration bowed to political pressure and hysteria, opting to go ahead with executive order 9066 and the mass expulsion of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.

Though our government has officially apologized for the internment of Japanese-Americans and paid reparations to the victims, the U.S. is currently witnessing a rebirth of a similar kind of ugly suspicion.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the attitude towards Muslims in the U.S. has continuously degraded in a way that mirrors that of the attitude towards Japanese-Americans 70 years ago. Many think Muslims are incapable of the American way of life and push to have their rights violated even more than they were in the days after Sept. 11.

This election cycle has taken these un-American sentiments and amplified them to new levels, all while social media allows these sentiments to poison the fabric of our society. Islamophobia and a disrespect for civil rights have jumped out from the fringe and are now seen and absorbed by countless Americans who spread it on comment threads and public forums. It is a repeating process that seems to curse a nation of immigrants, underscored by a past tainted with racist laws and anti-migrant attitudes.

We’ve been here before, and the risk we face today is real. We know what people, even well-meaning people, will tolerate when they’re angry and afraid, when they lose trust in their neighbors and our communities break. Every time we question our dedication to the rule of law, every time we wonder if each person in this country should be entitled to due process, every time we treat any citizen less than a full citizen with full rights we take a step further down a slippery slope that leads to unethical policy actions like internment.

While rule of law is important to a peaceful democracy, laws are not inherently objective. Law is written by flawed and emotional humans. That’s why it’s so important to care unconditionally about the civil rights of everyone in the country. A law may or may not be ethical, but our rights can keep us away from that slippery slope when society understands their importance and has the courage to demand them for all, no matter the situation.

Japanese internment is a stain on our nation’s history and the current atmosphere towards Muslims is eerily, if not dangerously, similar. We have betrayed the rights of our fellow citizens before and have always come to regret it in hindsight. Though we live in a moment of fear, we must reject panicked calls to abandon what makes our society strong. We must hold fast to the values this country stands for. Without them, we are nothing.

A few years ago, the late Justice Antonin Scalia condemned the Korematsu ruling and Japanese internment. “You are kidding yourself,” he added, “if you think the same thing will not happen again.”

Lucas Scarasso is a security analyst who’s currently pursuing an M.A. in international security at George Mason University. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.